Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Asian currencies are the best bets
against the dollar as currency markets anticipate quantitative
easing from the Federal Reserve, said David Mann, head of
research, Americas at Standard Chartered Plc.

“I think there are better bets out there rather than
purely going with long the euro against the dollar, such as the
Korean won, Indonesian rupiah and the Indian rupee,” New York-based Mann said in a Bloomberg Television interview today with
Julie Hyman and Mark Crumpton.

“We think these currencies are likely going to appreciate
and we’ve been seeing walls of money coming in increasingly,
amounts of allocations coming from investors from this part of
the world in the U.S. and also from Europe,” he said.

Mann said he expects China’s currency to slowly appreciate.
A gain of 20 to 30 percent would change the market’s mentality
toward it.

“It’s going to go gradually and we’re going to see other
currencies that are sort-of proxy currencies for the renminbi,
the Korean won, the Malaysian ringgit, continue to appreciate
alongside it,” he said.

China’s central bank pledged in a statement it will expand
flexibility in the yuan, which has gained 2.1 percent since a
two-year dollar peg was scrapped on June 19.

“We do believe it is in China’s interest to allow that
currency to appreciate,” Mann said. “We’re going to see more
and more of offshore renminbi and increasingly we’re going to
see used as a reserve currency.”